


waking up

by halfwheeze



Series: Clint Barton Birthday Bash Bingo (2020) [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Injury, Major Character Injury, Recovering Clint Barton, Worried Natasha Romanov, could be read as platonic or romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25591228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwheeze/pseuds/halfwheeze
Summary: Aw, concussion, no.This probably definitely isn’t good. A collapsed building, an archer who definitely can’t fly, and no escape plan. It wasn’t exactly a recipe for success, and Clint can tell from the hospital bed he woke up in that it worked out about as well as could be expected.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Series: Clint Barton Birthday Bash Bingo (2020) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854844
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33
Collections: Clint Barton Birthday Bash





	waking up

**Author's Note:**

> For a tumblr prompt, but also for the CCBBB - 
> 
> Clint Barton Birthday Bash Bingo Square 2: Aw, ____, no.

_ Aw, concussion, no.  _

This probably definitely isn’t good. A collapsed building, an archer who definitely can’t fly, and no escape plan. It wasn’t exactly a recipe for success, and Clint can tell from the hospital bed he woke up in that it worked out about as well as could be expected. He can feel the muscle in his legs, underworked and overrested, and wonders how long he’s been out. He hopes it wasn’t too long. He might have missed an episode of Dog Cops, and that is so totally not the business. He might have missed his turn to pick the movie for movie night! Tony never gives concessions for injuries, so they would have skipped his turn entirely. Assholes. Clint is halfway through a mental rant when he notices Natasha sleeping next to him, slumped in the waiting chair. 

She looks rough. Rougher than he’s ever seen her before, hair mussed and unwashed, no makeup but the remnants of mascara, and her nail polish is cracked. For any other feminine person, those traits might be relatively normal. For the Black Widow, Clint gets a sinking feeling in his stomach and wonders exactly how long he’s been out. He watches her but doesn’t bother to wake her - if anyone else starts even walking down the hall, she’ll wake anyway. They’re both like that, but he doesn’t know when  _ she  _ became comfortable enough to sleep while  _ he  _ was awake. It wasn’t so quick as his own comfort, it never was, but it must have been years ago. He wants to lace their fingers just to know that she’s there. He doesn’t. 

She wakes up anyway. 

_ “Clint,”  _ she gasps, startling awake and grabbing at his hand herself. When she sees him awake, cognizant and aware, there’s something so fragile to her that Clint has no idea what to do with it. She’s his best friend, his partner, his perfect other piece, the caution to his forward motion, the rough edges to his clean comfort. She’s his  _ Nat,  _ whatever that always means for him. His safe place. 

“I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re okay, Nat. We’re good,” he whispers, cautious of how much his throat hurts, and she reaches for the cup of ice chips next to his bed. He has to wonder how often they’ve been replacing them if they’re just  _ there,  _ but he has all ideas that he’s in the Stark Tower medical wing, not an actual hospital. Natasha hand feeds him several of the chips, letting him suck on three of them at a time instead of the usual one. He waits for them to melt in his mouth before bothering her into speaking. She looks too shellshocked, too guilty, too  _ something  _ to speak at first, and he wants to give her time. 

“I watched you fall,” she says eventually, her voice just as small as his whispers, and something in the range of his chest cracks apart. As many times as she’s seen that, it must have been some kind of bad this time. He really does lace their fingers now, his still bruised knuckles cracking slightly from the bit of strain. He doesn’t mind. It’s worth it. 

“I’m okay, Natty. I’ll get better. Broken bones grow back together stronger - you won’t be able to keep up with me when I’m all healed up,” he proposes in his best jovial voice, giving her one of his best grins. She doesn’t give him a smile back, but some of the tension in her face relaxes before she’s grimacing again. 

“I watched you fall. You fell and we couldn’t find you and you - you weren’t responding on the comms. You weren’t saying anything. You weren’t there. That was. That was the most scared I’ve ever been, Clint. I think you’ve ruined me, Hawkeye,” Nat says stiltedly, looking down at their laced fingers. She swallows audibly and is she - is she crying? Is she about to cry? Nat doesn’t cry. Natasha Romanoff does not cry, because Clint will cry and then they’ll both be crying and how  _ useless  _ is that? He strokes his thumb over hers to get her attention back, and when she looks at him, he smiles. He means it, means it, means it, because even if he is in pain and Nat is crying and they’re both crying, he still means all his smiles at Natasha Romanoff. 

“I’m okay. Nothing too bad happened,” he promises, even if he doesn’t know the extent of his own injuries. He just wants to reassure her. She shakes her head. 

“You don’t understand, Clint. You’ve  _ ruined  _ me. The Widow… I’m not meant to have any connections, any reason to depend on another human being, but. I don't know how to exist in a world without you. I don’t know how to live without weird omelettes in the morning and couch cuddles and reruns of Dog Cops and Kitchen Nightmares and someone to tell me that the nightmares aren’t real. I can’t do this without you,” she rambles - the Black Widow  _ rambles  _ \- and Clint just wants to stand up to hold her. Instead, he scoots over, patting the hospital bed space next to him. There’s no hesitation in her quick migration, the way she throws herself from the chair and into his side, just softly enough to make sure she doesn’t damage anything. He wraps an arm around her. 

“It’s okay to need me. I need you too. I love you, Tasha. You’re the most important person in my life,” he says simply, because she always needs things like this - emotional things - laid out in the simplest terms. Sometimes he wants to kill every single person involved in Red Room training himself. Sometimes he wants to take Natasha with him to do it, a little Widow-Hawk vacation from Avenging to do some classic  _ revenge.  _ He takes all of his protective emotions and puts a kiss on the top of her head, pulling her even closer to him. 

“I love you too,” she replies, her voice still so quiet and crackling, but he knows she means it just as much as he does. She loves him as much as anyone can. And that works for them. 


End file.
